Damped "light"

The legendary magazine closes after 121 years of existence. Or not? "New" spoke with his chief editor Sergei Agafonov

At the end of December, it became known that the entire team of the magazine "Spark", whose history begins from the end of the 19th century, will be dismissed, and the magazine itself - at least in its current form - will cease to exist. The Light team received notifications of dismissal in early December, and in the last paper issue published a farewell letter. “Since the“ Ogka ”employees were informed of the dismissal“ in connection with the optimization of the organizational and staff structure ”, the conclusion suggests itself: not only to people, but also to the editorial office of the magazine in the optimized farm of the Kommersant ID ( it was released in its composition since 2009.-Ed. ) There was no place. Whether there is somewhere else-the question is open, ”the final editorial column says.

Representatives of the publishing house did not make official statements, but it is known that the brand itself remains in its ownership, but the magazine will definitely not be issued: even technical employees, layoutrs, correctors, and bild-editors received notification of dismissal. At the same time, the conversations that the magazine would stop going out sounded at the beginning of winter, but then an official refutation of this information followed.

What is the reason for the closure is also not publicly disclosed, but it is likely that it is solely about economic reasons. According to one version, a significant part of the journal’s revenue was the editorial office of the editorial office with Aeroflot and the sale of “Light” in the waiting rooms for flights at airports and at the stations: after the start of the pandemic, the number of passengers decreased sharply, and sales fell. Retail gave some part of the money, but this market segment is now in a significant crisis.

However, the matter is not even in the economy as such: the existence of a “light” in 2020 looked more anomaly than a rule. Being a cult publication, the magazine has remained in recent years not the most noticeable phenomenon in the Russian media. The editor -in -chief of Ognka Sergey Agafonov told the Novaya correspondent that he had nothing to add to the above reductions in the magazine, but he agreed to tell about why the possible closure of the publication was a big loss for the entire Russian media space.

- How would you describe the reader of the “light” in 2020? Who is this person?

- No innovations happened: this is a person who is familiar to us, and we are familiar to him. Unlike all other publications that are looking for their reader and niche, the “light” has a fairly unique portrait of our reader, no one has such a portrait: equally, about 30%, all age categories are presented in the readership of the “light”. A third of our audience is people under 25–27 years old, another third of readers - up to 45–50 years old, and another third - people are already aged.

The “light” was formed as a publication that not one person reads, but read by the whole family: this means that everyone in accordance with his age can find something interesting in the journal. This concept has been preserved for many years, which was very valuable for us and that, I think, it was quite a unique thing in magazine history.

- The family that your materials were designed for - is this a family of intellectuals or simpler people?

- If you create an publication from scratch, such a question is probably fair: at first a niche is being searched, a marketing study is carried out - this audience is important for us, this one is not important. All this crap, which is now popular. But since the “light” story has 121 years, and there was no need to invent anything - we did not invent. And in general I must say that

The brand is quite vengeful.

In the history of the “light” there was a couple of experiments, when they tried to do it in the youth format, and in some other-and nothing happened, because he remained the way he was. This can be called conservatism, you can inertia, you can cross - as you like.

- There is also an expression about “light” - “warm lamp” magazine.

- Well, you can say so. Although I would not agree with the expression “warm lamp”, because it implies a certain violence: we must look for both a lamp and warmth. I would formulate this differently: he is a non-aggressive magazine, and he is even in intonations. “Warm tube” means that the magazine is conflicting. I wouldn’t say that about the “light”, because if the situation demanded that and some problems arose that touched a large number of people-our readers, and the editors, too, the magazine was both sharp and biting. Yes, everything happened.

-Due to the fact that the “light” is intended for the whole family, there is a feeling that the magazine simultaneously wrote about everything, but there is little about what exactly. Is there such an expression - “about life”: is it suitable for “light”?

- Of course, “about life” is suitable, but about life is also a rather abstract thing. "Spark" wrote about people. About people who live this life in different types: who is successful, who is unsuccessful, who is ordinary, who is extraordinary. Therefore, everything was interesting. This, in general, was one of the criteria: the magazine could be opened from any page, and from any page it should have been interesting.

-You will not agree with me, but it seems that the problem is that it is very difficult to now recall some kind of “light” text over the past few years, which would be very sharply discussing, at least in networks. After the material about the “Lyuber”, it is generally very difficult to recall the text that would be associated with the “spin”. Why so?

- Naturally, I do not agree with you. When there was material about the "Lyubers", there were no social networks, so this is not a very correct comparison. And then what to take for the criterion - in which networks are discussion and

How to count the effect? If you look at the number of clicks or posts - one conversation; If the number of borrowings, the use of "Ognokov" plots is different.

Let me explain what I mean. Many “Ogrokovsky” plots that arose in the magazine then emerged on the TV, and there were a lot of these stories, of course, without links to “light”, but with our heroes, messages, and moves.

Let's say we found a man who bake bread and handed it out on his own initiative to the poor and poor and what he received for it. After that there was a whole television saga about the story of this person. He recently, unfortunately, died. This is the plot that passed throughout the country and was in all social networks.

Another “light” managed to help the long-term wheat in the Timiryazevsky gardens due to development was not destroyed-this story is also hearing, because after these publications there was analysis of flights at the Academy of Sciences and the decision was made at the government level.

There are many examples. And responses in social networks are a sufficiently muddy criterion, because the number of these responses, the nature of these social networks and the level of these reactions that went after our publications, they are calculated in different cases differently, and there is no single scale.

- I meant a political resonance. It is one thing to talk about a person who gives everyone bread is a beautiful, good, kind story. But another thing is to tell about the poisoning of Navalny so that everyone quotes the article “Light” about this.

- And why is Navalny's poisoning perceived as something that needs to be quoted? The message is not very clear. Did the “light” participate in politics?

- Including.

- The answer is simple. The “light” had its own position: we are considering the situation in which the country and people live, and we make the relevant decisions - both experts, and our own - and offer them to the reader in order to think and postpone. We did not consider ourselves a political publication, we certainly had a political position.

- This position was more likely centrist, or did it gravitate to more conservative points of view, or to more liberal ones?

- One of our best and most beloved authors, Mikhail Mikhailovich Zhvanetsky, whom we recently lost, categorically came into rabies when they demanded to take a position from him. And this game is in positioning - it is actually about nothing. You confess some beliefs and do it in accordance with them or write about it. To declare that I am a centrist or I am left, I am right - what kind of madness is this? This can be infected with some part of the public at a certain age. A normal serious person lives in accordance with his beliefs, principles, upbringing and ideas about the beautiful. That, in fact, is the whole position. And how to call it - history, it seems to me, is meaningless.

- I am so focusing on this, because the “light” has been coming out for a long time, and in different years he occupied one or another. Let this be a radical example, but you can remember the covers with Stalin. Suppose the magazine then had no choice - or not to print poetry for his death. But now there is a choice. And I want to understand: based on your beliefs, what key message the editorial office puts when he collects one or another picture of the week?

- If you formulate a question in this way, this means that the editors are engaged in a strict sample in accordance with some prerequisites or, I do not know, the flight tasks that need to be carried out. This is the charm of the “light” that there is no violent sample. You have a panorama of the week, and there are things that are noticeable from the point of view of the editors and are of interest. To stay in the rhythm of life and not to be in complete separation, there must be real life outside the window on the pages of the magazine. But this does not mean at all that the magazine should turn into an information agency or follow in the trend of the same social networks. In the end, people, if they are interested in something from social networks, they will find the right things there for themselves. And our task is to present a broader picture based on those views that seem true to us. Do not catch, do not steal ... Well, what other criteria should be? Here is the position for you. We can’t blame ourselves in anything, with pride I can say from myself and from the editorial office: I have not been ashamed for any number.

- Each number is a manual assembly, and there has never been a single template?

- Absolutely right.

-The covers of the “light” also always seemed to me timeless: they made announcements and historical texts with the reproduction of some picture, scientific texts, and some completely private stories. Who made a decision on what will be on the cover this time?

- Cover is a separate story, diplomas even write about them. In Soviet times, the creation of a cover for a “light” was a whole science. During the time, while we are making a magazine, this process, to be honest, was flour, not science. At first, the layout in which we went out assumed a large photo on the cover, and at first we tried to hold on to it. But it just so happened that in large photographs often (since persons should be recognizable), mostly some foreign people such as Hollywood actors-we had many such covers. This had nothing to do with real life in the country: it seemed that such a format looked strange enough. Therefore, gradually the covers became different-partly reporting, partly some even philosophical and regional.

Was it a collegial choice? Well, yes, the team that did the next number - as a rule, is the editor -in -chief and two deputy, here they are our artist, - it puzzled over the choice of cover. And every time it was not easy: the cover is a special story, it is a kind of message, symbolism. And sometimes it was difficult to choose from the set of materials that was in the room, some frame that corresponds to the mood of the release. By the way, these moral torment is that which distinguished the “light” from the “lights” of past years. Previously, the covers were staged, and it was possible to decide in advance what would be on it on it, and work calmly on it. And now, since the magazine followed, as they say, the rhythm of life, any idea that could be dragged, cherished and cherished, broke up about the picture that we received this week and which our initial idea categorically did not correspond. Therefore, everything was always solved operational and difficult enough.

-But, putting some cover about science or about history, it is very difficult to get into the trend. The reader who buys a “light” in a newspaper kiosk or in a supermarket, looks at the cover, and it is assumed that he should see something sharply actively so that it hooks it.

- This is a question for marketers, and it does not have a single answer. In practice, we bred a certain law of retail sales, drawn covers (we had several examples) are sold worse than photographs. Among the photos, reporting personnel sometimes played better, and sometimes worse than portrait, here the criterion is already blurred. The message that the cover should motivate a person to buy a magazine is true, but I cannot say that he is absolutely defining.

- If now the editorial office, which is reduced and sent on free swimming, will select a certain investor who wants to make an analogue of the “light” with the same authors, with the same concept - will you agree to do this or are you devoted to the “light”?

- There were no suggestions yet. They will be - we must see what kind of proposals this is. We did not look for them.

“But is it important for you, from whom the proposal will come?” It will be the conditional Mikhail Khodorkovsky or Igor Sechin, for example, what do you say?

“I have to tell you that neither one nor the second will make a“ light ”. Here you have the whole answer. Then, if the task is to create a “light” clone, I probably wouldn’t play such a game.

- Maybe it is that in general the “light” as a phenomenon will simply cease to exist?

- Yes, everything can be. I do not know what will do with the brand a publishing house. This topic slightly reduces the pathos of our conversation, because we are talking about creativity, about the reader’s sympathies, about traditions, but there is a simple question in the market economy in which we now live, is a matter of property. And from this point of view, both the brand of the “light” and its invaluable archive are just property. The property has a owner. How he disposes of them - questions to the owner. What kind of species are on plans - again the question is there. Whether all the parameters that we are talking about will be taken into account - from the cover to the audience - I do not know. Our area of ​​responsibility was that we had a great happiness to make this publication for many years and somehow be involved in the history of this publication and the country, ultimately, because they are difficult to divide.

- Do you now have something to read without a “light”?

- ( Laughs. ) If you mean a media story - by virtue of the profession, of course, I will read and, by virtue of traditions, I will probably follow the news. Another thing is with what interest and how closely. Now the last number must be done, and then we will already look.